1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to policy management defined for systems that automatically apply policies, and more particularly to systems and methods for policy authoring and generating suggested entries for policy sets where coverage is not complete or in conflict.
2. Description of the Related Art
Policy management is becoming more pervasive as a de facto means to specify automatic adjustment of managed entities according to a pre-planned set of circumstances in a “domain space”. There are countless domains, such as those involving heating, ventilation and air condition (HVAC) regulation in occupied spaces, processes in manufacture, operating schema for hand held devices, information processing systems for finance, health and a vast plurality of other private and public sector activities.
Policy applies to managing some kind of entity. Entities apply to device settings and adjustments, mechanical reconfiguration, permitting access, denying access, altering data, deleting data, adding data, and a plurality of other applications of a decision.
The application area is often referred to as Domain/Scope. A policy includes a statement that specifies an effective domain, a condition including at least one logical expression that can be evaluated to determine current triggering and a decision that describes the consequence to actual triggering. Other factors commonly found in building policies for automatic deployment include stating a purpose which effectively extends the condition logic, a priority which permits specifying an always present default policy and may serve as a conflict resolver, a dynamic adaptability factor which can provide a way for a policy to be temporarily in effect instead of constantly in effect and, finally, cost which provides a resolver with yet another way to determine a course of action.
In many instances, a plurality of policy statements is adjoined in a set for which there is no corresponding default policy. This circumstance is very common in the art. A corollary to this problem is in security policies where there is generally a default rule that says “no access”. Such domains include managing devices. A problem potentially exists for circumstances unforeseen by the policy author. A managed entity might enter into a state defined by sensors, amounts, time of day, and day of week and similar physical and temporal factors that could impair obtaining expected results. In the worst case scenario, a system catastrophic failure could ensue.